Once Upon a Time
by fowl68
Summary: That was how all their stories began these days. Once upon a time. And there were no happy stories to share. Not anymore. Uchiha tribute


**Disclaimer:** Don't own anything.

**Author's Note: **This is a weird little piece that came to mind after reading some Shisui and Itachi fics. If you haven't read any of those, there are some real good ones on this site. But, in general, this revolves around all the Uchihas.

-/-/-/-

_What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.  
>~Cynthia Ozick<em>

-/-/-/-

There aren't many photographs that survived the massacre. Perhaps there had simply never been many of them period. The remaining ones are in the evidence room, inaccessible. Now, they're scattered through the village and beyond its borders in back pockets and wallets, travelling packs and frames. Some of them are hung on thumbtacks on a bulletin board or taped onto a wall.

But they're all the same, in one way or another. They're all anyone has left of the Uchihas.

-/-

The first photo that Kakashi ever saw of an Uchiha was the photo that went along with his teammates' files. Minato had passed them to him as they shared the lumpy couch, legs stretched parallel to each other. The files had been on his lap and he'd read the paper before ever looking at the picture.

Name: Obito. Uchiha

Age: 12

Height: 5'3

Weight: 113 lbs.

Hair: Black

Eyes: Black

It's only afterwards that he sees the image to go with the name, the face to go with the information. He'd heard of the Uchihas, of course, had even had one in his Academy class, small as it was and short-lived as his time there was.

Kakashi hadn't expected to see the bright grin on Obito's face, orange goggles—looking brand new—on his forehead and pushing up dark bangs that only made his hair look messier. Uchihas don't smile, are too strict in their mannerisms for that sort of thing.

He remembers looking up at Minato, arching an eyebrow and saying, "_This_ is my teammate?"  
>Minato had grinned a little at him. "Don't be so pessimistic. At the very least, you won't be bored."<p>

"Somehow, I doubt that." Kakashi tells him.

He hadn't seen the way that Minato looked at him, smile and eyes a little sad and a little wondering and it was quite a bit different from his usual bright grins. "Don't be so quick to say such things." Kakashi remembers him saying on rainy nights. "You never know. He could turn out to be your best friend."

-/-

Obito Uchiha becomes much more than simply a best friend. He becomes the first thing that Kakashi sees in the mirror, bright red spinning in greeting before he turns away. Red was never a good thing in their line of work.

-/-

Jiraiya remembers seeing the newspaper three countries away. He'd been sitting in a tea house, the weather miserable outside and he'd needed something to warm his bones. The tea house had been full that sunset and a man had asked to sit across from him because there were no other available tables.

Jiraiya tells him, "Be my guest." and the man smiles gratefully—his hair and clothes dripping and he's shivering. In truth, he reminds Jiraiya of a drowned cat.

He has a rolled up newspaper with him. "Have you heard about what's been happening in Konoha? It's terrible."

Jiraiya has indeed been hearing. He was in regular correspondence with his student. Or, as regular as it could be. But he hasn't heard anything from an outsider's point of view, so he says, "No, why?"

The man unrolls the newspaper, spreading the damp pages. "Look at this. Poor kid."

The child is small, fragile-looking. There are bandages along his forehead and thin torso. God, but the boy couldn't be more than four, perhaps five years old. Jiraiya's heart hurts just looking at him. The picture is grainy and water-damaged, but he can still make out some of the boy's individual features. Dark hair and haunted, bruised eyes. The rest of his face is warped from the rain, but the caption is still somewhat legible.

WAR HORRORS IN KONOHA

A boy (4) pictured here, stands in the wreckage of a supposedly safe portion of the village. He was found by a family member (Pictured below) and was near death when found.

The other picture, smaller, but less damaged, is of a boy, slightly older, with similar features. His dark hair was tangled and he had his arm protectively around the other boy, dark eyes narrowed in a glare at the photographer.

That was when Jiraiya knew that the boys were Uchihas. They couldn't be anything else with those faces—darkly angelic and pale with the prominent cheekbones. The article continued to describe war relief efforts and the supposed 'child soldiers', but Jiraiya can't remember any of the res.t

The boys' faces, those of cornered animals—one with newfound fangs bared and the other with quietly desperate eyes—haunt his memories for years afterward.

-/-

The only time he sees Itachi, in small hallway with his student beside him and a large man flanking the Uchiha, he knows him immediately. Not because of the wanted posters, but because he remembers a rainy day and a newspaper. This young man in front of him has not changed very much. Still darkly lovely, but Jiraiya knows the look of warchildren and Itachi still has it.

-/-

There is an old bookstore, nearly in the civilian district. It's favored by the generations that were too old for modern times and too young for ancient history. The owner always behind the counter has receding, dusky red hair and he keeps a bulletin board up near the door.

The first photos you notice are of a woman and a girl, both similar enough to be related. The woman has light brown skin and her brown hair curls messily around her shoulders. The girl has the owner's hair and is young enough to be proud of her two missing teeth.

There are photos of many people on the bulletin board. Teams and best friends, mothers and brothers and sisters and everything from every spectrum.

In the far top right corner, nearly hidden now by the new photographs, is an old Polaroid of three boys. The oldest has hair that looks like it's never seen a brush, held back from his face by a pair of brilliantly orange goggles. He's seated cross-legged on the floor with a book in his lap.

The other two boys are looking at him with rapt attention. One's hair, just as dark as the other two's, curls rebelliously around his face. He's resting his chin on the boy in his lap's shoulder. The other boy has longer hair, straight and seemingly meticulously cared for.

There's writing in the white space beneath the image. Chickenscratch and scrawl beside writing that was almost childlike in its neatness.

_Obito, Shisui, Itachi—Ages 12. 8 and 5 and three quarters._

-/-

After the bodies had been counted and buried, after the only survivor had been tucked into a hospital bed, there is another search to double-check for corpses missed.

They don't find any corpses, but they find a box—half open and filled with papers—on the blood-soaked floor. At first, they'd thought it might contain information, some clue as to _why_.

There are no clues. Only birth certificates and report cards—a mother's box. There is a photograph in there, worn around the edges. It's a photo in motion—the subjects half-turned as though surprised, their mouths opened slightly in questioning. Their hands are linked, one small and chubby, the other longer-fingered and already lightly calloused. The Uchiha fan on the back of the taller one's shirt is clear in the image, even partially obscured as it is by the blur of motion that is the long ponytail shifting with the turn of the head and shoulders.

There's a knock at the doorframe. "Hey, kid, you find anything?"

Hayate looks back at Genma. The senbon isn't wobbling between his lips, a sign of how much this was getting to him. "I don't understand."

Genma frowns a little and closes the few feet separating them. He sees the photo and makes a noise of understanding in his throat. "No one does."

"No, I mean…I knew Itachi. I went on missions with him, had lunch and talked with him sometimes. Hell, he's held my insides while waiting for a medic to get to me." Hayate looks back down at the photo and tries to reconcile the images of the quietly polite young man with the blood-stained phantom that had only just recently haunted this room, who had slaughtered his entire family. "…He wasn't very close with most of his family, I know that much. But, his brother—and Shisui…I can't believe he would ever kill them. Or any of them, really."

Genma crouches beside his best friend. "I know, kid." He always calls Hayate kid because sometimes, like now, he still was the same child he'd been when they'd met. "He didn't kill the brother, but I get what you're saying. He snapped, what can I say?"

"Is it really that simple, Genma?" Hayate asks quietly. "He loved Sasuke. And Shisui too. I can't believe he would just kill them like that."

"Don't matter much now." Genma says, standing back up and taking a look around the room. "He's gone and they're dead."

"Yeah." The younger man sighs. "Doesn't matter."

-/-

Every year on that day, they find a secluded corner of the local bar and drink away the memories. _(Until Hayate's killed, murdered, and then Genma sits and drinks alone, the memories riding him hard) _

Hayate is a different man now. Thinner. More sallow, the disease finally taking its toll. Shadows cling at the bags beneath his eyes and he's not the same smiling young man that used to lounge on Genma's couch after coming in through the window at ungodly hours of the morning.

"He was a good guy, though. Wouldn't you say?"

"Who, kid?" Genma asks, the whiskey still burning at his throat.

"Itachi."

They don't speak the name much anymore. Most of that generation doesn't. It's too painful, to think of the teenager they remember—calm and pleasant company—with the monster who'd left an eight year old little brother without anyone.

Genma stares into his glass, hoping to see answers because they never should be having this conversation. This was a nightmare. A terrible nightmare. But it isn't.

"…Once upon a time, he was."

That was how all their stories began these days. Once upon a time. And there were no happy stories to share. Not anymore.

-/-

There is a photo floating about her dresser—sometimes she can find it, sometimes she can't—of her and two boys. One, hair curling around his collar, has his arm around her waist and is pressing what she remembers to be a cold kiss to her cheek, his double chocolate ice cream cone in the other hand.

The other boy is smiling faintly, hiding it in his own cone of butter pecan. He's so similar to the first boy, but his hair is straight and long and held back in a tail.

She's on the far right, a cherry popsicle in hand, laughing as Shisui kisses her tattooed cheek. The three of them are sitting close enough that their thighs are touching, sticking to each other slightly with the sweat. It had been a particularly humid summer, Hana remembers. Iruka had been the one to take the picture.

She misses them sometimes, the Uchiha boys, as she calls them in the privacy of her own mind. They'd been friends—and more, as the years went on.

And they're both gone now. Sometimes, Hana expects to hear the same of everyone else in her strange, in-between generation. Another name to add to the memorial stone, another name in the bingo book.

That doesn't stop her from wishing them back, Shisui grinning charmingly at her and Itachi's dry wit making her laugh.

-/-

She sees the other Uchiha boy some afternoons, when she goes to pick Kiba up from the Academy. The first time, her heart had sped up because he looked _so much like them_. It was to be expected, really. He was an Uchiha. But Hana—and Konoha in general—had forgotten so much of the Uchihas since their near extinction.

But she looks more and she sees the differences and she is filled with a sudden upwelling of hatred for Itachi for ripping the world away from her and that little brother of his.

-/-

Shizune has a picture that she keeps on her refrigerator. It's creased and slightly water-damaged from all the travel before she and Tsunade settled back in their birth village.

The picture is of four women—technically, Shizune thinks as she looks at that picture each morning before making breakfast, they were still sort of girls then. Young women, she supposes, is a sort of compromise—sitting in a booth.

The one cramped all the way against the wall was Shizune herself, her hair down to her shoulders and—had she ever looked that young? There was a strawberry milkshake in front of her and she remembers that she was the only one in their group that liked those.

Beside her is a woman that she wishes she could remember more of and that she wishes she'd been able to spend more time with. Vibrantly red hair falling down her back with what Shizune had always heard described as apple-cheeks and she'd been caught in the middle of laughing, pale blue eyes shining. And, naturally, Shizune remembers with a fond smile, Kushina was eating ramen. Her son was more like her than she would ever know.

Across from them are both of the others. The person directly opposite of Shizune was someone she'd seen less and less of as the years went on. Mikoto's hair had gentle waves, curling slightly at the ends and her summer dress was her favorite color of blue-green. This photo was taken only a few days before she became an Uchiha.

Yoshino's chestnut hair had been shorter than, a bob cut because she was always saying that she didn't have time to deal with its unruliness in the morning. She was sipping at her coffee, but waving at the camera that Shizune remembers the owner of that little restaurant had taken.

Those had been good days, Shizune reminisces as she pulls out milk for her coffee and grabs the cereal from the top of the fridge. It hadn't been long before the war, but long enough that the possibility hadn't really been in their minds. Those days had been a kind of endless summer.

-/-

Shizune would like to get together with them again, but half of them are dead and that old restaurant was gone now. She sees Yoshino in the market sometimes and they'll chat, but there's always a kind of strange silence in the background where Kushina's loud laughter and Mikoto's gently teasing remarks should be.

-/-

Kakashi sees the picture when visiting Iruka. It's framed and sitting on one of his many bookshelves. It's a group photo, a huge one, and Kakashi isn't ashamed to say that he can't name all the people in it. Iruka probably can, because he's always been good at that sort of thing. The picture's overexposed, so everyone looks particularly pale and bright.

He can see Genma, Hayate and Raidou, together as they always were, _(Had been because Hayate's dead and gone and Genma and Raidou are sort of broken without him)_ on the right with their arms around each other's shoulders. Asuma, smoking even then, and standing with Inoichi. Kurenai stands with Anko, Hana and—Kakashi's heart speeds up and freezes a little when he sees this—Rin. Rin looks as she always does in Kakashi's memories, laughing with the others, her tattooed cheeks stretching with the motion. There's a can of soda in her hand and Anko has a dango stick poking out from between her teeth.

Iruka is talking to someone sitting on the wall he was leaning on. Kakashi's heart does that strange speed-freeze when he sees the familiar goggles and grin.

And there, in the corner because Obito and his two cousins were never far apart, are Shisui and Itachi, heads bent in a conversation that looks like it excludes the rest of the world.

Kakashi remembers Obito and Rin mentioning they were going to get together with the rest of their classmates, if he wanted to come. He'd told them no and Obito had shrugged and left, but not before calling him an antisocial bastard.

-/-

Iruka catches him looking at it and says quietly, "It was a long time ago."

Kakashi glances between him and the photo. In the photo, the wound across Iruka's nose and cheeks is fresher, still red around the edges. In the here and now, Iruka is all scar tissue.

And that had been before Obito's eyes could swirl into the redness that Kakashi knows too well. Before Rin had left after the war and never come back_ (Sometimes, Kakashi thinks he sees her in the street, but when the person turns, it's never her. He likes to think she'll come back someday, or write to let him know that she's at least okay)_. Before Itachi came into the ANBU office, polite and slender and ever so deadly. Before Shisui was found floating in the river. Before the massacre. Before the Kyuubi. Before his team got ripped apart and before their friends were found dead in the fields. Just, Before.

"…Yeah. A long time ago."

-/-

In the ANBU offices, there's a photograph glued onto their break room door. Yugao wants to laugh and cry every time she sees it.

It's Hayate—as he was; healthy, with his easy smile and unconscious grace—with face slightly red and Shisui—all dark curls and flicker-fast emotions—planting a kiss on his mouth. Yugao is told that it was because of a bet, long before she joined. Itachi had been in charge of the camera—naturally, Genma says with an eye roll, and Yugao doesn't quite understand, but that's because she never knew Shisui-and-Itachi. By the time she joined ANBU, Shisui was in Mist country and Itachi was the quiet teenager who opened doors for her even when she told him not to bother—and Shisui had super-glued the photo to the door as proof to their captain.

Genma remembers hearing the yelling at the Uchihas through the door—Hayate hadn't given Itachi up as the photographer, but it was obvious to any who knew them—and he remembers the rest of their squad trying not to break out in laughter.

-/-

Yugao was sent to chase down Itachi after he went rogue. She caught him—or rather, he let her catch him. The young man in front of her was not the same one she remembered even from a few days ago. This one was blood-stained and painted in charcoal.

He'd said two words to her, eyes spinning. "I'm sorry."

He'd sped away after that—sometimes, Yugao wanted to swear that, after Shisui's suicide_ (Murder, her instinct whispers)_ that Itachi had gotten his flicker-fast speed as a last gift—and she didn't bother trying to go after him.

It wasn't as if she could catch him anyway.

-/-

Sasuke doesn't remember his cousins. He's seen the framed pictures of Itachi and he remembers one of them that he always thought was strange. Itachi is half turned, as though someone called him, distracted him away from the photographer._ (But the Itachi that Sasuke knows would never be distracted. Not by anything or anyone)_ He's looking at someone just out of frame.

He remembers asking his mother and he doesn't remember exactly what she said. But he remembers a name. Shisui. It's a name without real context because what he remembers of Shisui can fill a matchbox.

But he remembers a sunset when Itachi's temper—he hadn't even known that Itachi _had_ a temper, so mild-mannered and quiet as he always was—got away with him and he'd taken down the police officers that came to their door asking after Shisui. _You were like brothers_, the officers had said.

There hadn't been many pictures in the house growing up. Itachi was the one that kept the most. Sasuke remembers that he found them by accident one day. They'd been in an old shoebox in one of his drawers.

Most of them had been of Itachi and another young man with dark curls. Lounging in a river, the curly-haired one floating on his back and Itachi lying on the bank, lower half in the water, upper half quite dry. Sitting outside of a dango shop that Sasuke knew well. In formal kimono. An Academy picture. One of them in ANBU armor. One of their faces that was oddly angled; the curly haired one had clearly taken that picture, his arm slightly in frame and his other one hooked around Itachi's shoulder.

There are some where Itachi and the other one are younger and there's another boy in the photos as well. Orange goggles and an everpresent bright grin. The other two are clearly Uchihas, Sasuke knows, but he's never heard of them.

There are letters in that box too, with careless scrawl replying to unconscious neatness, but Sasuke doesn't read those. Or rather, he read the first one, but he hadn't been able to understand what they were talking about. Something about the clan and their uncle and it was very dreary wherever the scrawl was and he missed Konoha's dry autumns.

-/-

The Itachi that Sasuke knows doesn't smile like he does in the photos. A little shy, almost not there, but it still is. Eyes not stained red, but that strange almost-black. Forever seeing someone just off frame.

-/-

Kakashi had spent more than one night in Minato's apartment. In truth, he'd spent more nights there than his own empty flat. He'd always woken before Minato. It was a fact of life that his sensei loved his sleep and, if it was up to him, he'd spend half the day napping out in the warm sunshine.

It was one of the first mornings that Kakashi had woken in the apartment and, feeling slightly awkward and not know what to do because this wasn't his house and his father had instilled _some_ manners in him, he'd wandered the living room.

On the coffee table was the typical genin picture. Kakashi recognizes Jiraiya-sama, younger than he'd ever seen him, grinning with a large hand on Minato's small shoulder. Kakashi doesn't recognize the girl at all_ (Minato tells him later that she'd died two weeks after this was taken)_ and the other boy is what Kakashi is beginning to recognize with disturbing ease as an Uchiha.

He looks haughty, with a nose that is slightly too big and it's been recently broken if the bandage is anything to go by. His dark hair is tucked behind his ears and his eyes are the same black as Obito's.

Minato murmurs a good morning as he slips into the kitchen on feet wearing mismatched socks.

"Sensei," Kakashi begins, not quite sure why he was asking. "Who is this?"

Minato shuffles over to him, pressing a toasted bagel with cream cheese and grape jelly into his free hand. He blinks at the picture. "You've seen him before. Although he looks somewhat different these days. That's Obito's uncle, Fugaku."

"The one he's always babysitting for?"

"Mm."

Obito had told them much about his youngest cousin, Itachi, who he was so proud of and who was really the quietest kid that anyone would ever meet.

"I didn't know you were on a team with him."

"To be honest, we weren't much of a team. We all went our separate ways real quick." Minato's eyes look strange, almost sad, almost regretful, but not quite.

"Do you still talk to him?"

"Sometimes. Actually, I talk to his wife more than I talk to him these days. She's real nice, Mikoto. And she makes a mean tomato salad."

-/-

In truth, the last time he really talks to Fugaku is at the hospital. He's woken in the middle of the night by Fugaku calling his house phone and asking if he could hightail it to Room 213?

Fugaku is nervous, pacing the hall.

Minato's first question is, "Why call me?"

Fugaku glances up at him before looking away. "…I didn't really have anyone else to call."

Minato finds that sad because he has a whole clan behind him. No one could have made it? No one cared that the man is about to be a father for the very first time and of course he's panicking. "Don't know what good I'm gonna be, but I'm here." Minato tells him.

They sit in silence, staring at the door to Mikoto's room. "…How are things with Kushina?" Fugaku asks quietly.

"…Good. I don't really know how to do this whole…long-term thing, so it's weird, but it's been going alright." Minato looks sideways at him. "How's married life?"

"Different." Fugaku says. "But not terribly. I don't really know how to be a husband."

Minato hums in understanding, leaning his head back against the wall. "…Do you suppose we ever stop learning things? That one day, we'll know everything and we'll be able to stop asking questions?"

Fugaku snorts. "I doubt it. That's just another one of your crazy dreams."

Minato laughs, but can't disagree.

-/-

Madara can remember one photo of his brother. Izuna had been grinning wide, arm thrown around his mature older brother's shoulders. They're so similar, they could almost appear to be twins. Everything from their facial structure to the colors are the same, but there is some softness to Izuna that Madara does not have to tell them apart.

That photo was burned to join with the ashes of the age.

-/-

There aren't many photos of Sasuke after age eight. Actually, there hadn't been many before that age. But there are scant few because no one had been around to take those pictures. No friends, no strange uncles, no laughing cousins or indulging brothers. Everyone was gone.

There are four copies of a photo. Three of them are framed. The fourth, Sasuke keeps in his back pocket and usually doesn't take it out to look at it except for those nights when the world seems just a little less empty.

It's a photograph he knows well, where an annoyed blonde is half-glaring at him from the corner of his eye and he's half-glaring right back. The girl is smiling at the camera, pink hair tucked back behind her ears and their sensei has warning hands plopped on shoulders and heads.

Suigetsu saw the photo once, but wisely didn't say anything. He just grinned a little knowingly and reclined back on one arm. Karin has never seen it and Juugo, well. Juugo knows what it is to miss someone.

-/-

Sakura's photo is on her dresser, which she used to spend so much time at, but most days now, it's a quick brush through her hair, wrap it up in a bun and she's off.

Kakashi's copy sits on a shelf above his bed, right beside another picture with another Uchiha. The Uchihas are opposites, one caught in the middle of laughing and the other with corners of his lips turned down.

That photo is the first thing Naruto sees when he wakes up at home. He blinks his eyes open and it's there, their childish faces already fading with memories.

-/-

In the ANBU locker room, with all its grime, where there is always an undercurrent of blood, sweat, tears that never happened and, occasionally, the echo of laughter, there is a locker that everyone has the combination to, but that few ever open.

It is in the far back, where the fluorescent lights still flicker on and off on their own timer. These are the old-timer's lockers, where Yugao and Raidou still keep their things and some of the lockers are still reserved in case some of them, like Genma and Kakashi and Asuma, ever decide to come back.

In the second row, fourth from the left, is that locker. Inside, are sheaves and pieces of papers. There's a variety of handwriting on them, from scribble to calligraphy, and, if one were to dig through it all, there are even photos.

Pictures of ANBU, long gone or dead or both. They're the ANBU's by unspoken law because the ANBU take care of their own. There are people unknown outside of the corps and others that aren't spoken of in the village anymore.

There are photos of best friends sleeping on each other's shoulders, black hair mingling and tangling, after a long mission, still in their towels. There are photos of Hayate with his arms around Yugao, both smiling. There's Kakashi and Asuma sitting on a wall and playing shogi, smoke from a cigarette drifting away on a long-forgotten spring breeze. There's Itachi, exhausted and sleeping on someone's horribly lumpy couch and Genma, prepared with a feather and whipped cream.

There's at least one photo of all of them after they got their tattoos. Some of them are together in groups, the expected groups. Itachi-and-Shisui. Genma-Raidou-Hayate. Everyone had applauded Yugao because she was the first female to make it, really make it through it all because she had a spine and heart of steel.

The letters are to the dead, to the missing, to the gone. It's the things that people never say or said or wished they had and the ANBU know how to keep secrets, so no one goes peering at the letters out of a general respect.

Sometimes, you can catch someone placing something inside. Not often though.

Occasionally, an old-timer would open the locker after a particularly bad mission and they would simply stand there and stare at the papers and photos and memories and the people that were missing from their jigsaw puzzle. It's a lonely thing, living this long when you're a shinobi.

-/-

Somehow, the memories are all that keep everyone linked. And if, sometimes, the memories manifest themselves in ghosts that lounge on couches and beds, who watch with redsored eyes that darken back to their natural color only in the peripheral, than no one really says anything.

After all, ghosts don't exist.

-/-/-

_Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.  
>~From the television show<em> The Wonder Years


End file.
